Please, register online and in advance prior to visiting the exhibition. This is so that we can manage numbers to ensure everyone has the best possible experience. The event allows visits of small groups (max. 5) every 30 minutes.

Registration: https://bit.ly/35zsFDX

α+α’: Heart as animal, body as trigger
Andrei Alecsandru
07.11 — 21.11 2020

α+α’ is a starting point in investigating, through visual and poetic methods, forms of male interaction. An intersection between limerent objects (Tennov, D, 1979) and objects of desire (in this context, males) takes place through representations of various situations, based on personal archives and found footages. The mediation of male encounters through online platforms, as well as practices such as cruising, reach the aspect of impulse behaviors. Oppositely, limerence is understood as obsessive longing for connection, at times lacking any physical connection.

In scenarios in which testosterone plays an important role, limerence can be considered the main tissue, while its boundaries are embroidered with anonymous, impersonal and impulsive approaches to humans.

Based on a series of stories and situations, the project takes a glance at understanding, in a poetic matter, of the mixture of longing and sexual impulse. The perspective here is based on the pathological aspect of falling in love, as a trigger for negative emotions in the long run. Sexual impulse, on the other hand, is viewed here as a truncate manner of interaction, understood as short term biochemical adjustment. Juxtaposing polarising methods of interaction, α+α’ is constructed on simulating layers of scenarios: a darkroom and an office. Here, they are both seen as stages for manifestations of male power, coming with a certain erotic charge.

Naturism, instances of Identity, XY, fetishes, longing and death become part of a fiction where reflection is invited in order to understand better our vital momentum. Physical instinct, flesh and feeling, find themselves in a constant dance, where objective reasoning remains in the shadows.

The project can be considered a form of mood-board, where moments and souvenirs are captured as ephemeral objects. The atmosphere counts on tension, as a metaphor of the two instances: romantic longing and physical impulse.

Andrei Alecsandru is focusing his practice on education in visual arts, questioning the therapeutic aspects of creation. He is a teaching assistant at U.N.A.G.E. Iasi, where in 2019 completed his doctoral degree at the department of Visual Arts.